MADRID: The television advertising market in Spain continues its stark decline, with a drop of 12.8% to 884.4m euros in the first half of 2013, compared to a figure of 1.0142bn euros in the same period a year ago.

FTA national television channels saw an average fall of 12.9% to 798.9m euros, meaning they took a total of 90.3% of the market. Mediaset, owner of Tele 5 and Cuatro, led with a market share of 44.1%, followed by Atresmedia on 43.1%.

This means that the regional broadcasters suffered disproportionately, with the 13 of them sharing a mere 7% of the revenues. Their average fall was 13.4%.

Pay-TV channels, meanwhile, saw a fall of 7.7% in advertising revenues and a market share of 2.6%.

The news comes as Warc's Consensus Ad Forecast has revised down global advertising expenditure growth for 2013 to 3.4%, which has nevertheless been bolstered by considerable increases in spending in the BRIC nations.

Spain, Italy and France sparked the largest downward revisions from the January 2013 forecast, and in Spain the total decline is now expected to be 9.5%.

The Spanish market is expected to grow again in 2014, however, by some 2%, though this is well below the average expected for the BRIC nations, all of which are expected to register double-digit growth.